The Captain recommends -

17/10/2004

The Blacksmith & the Bookkeeper

Very nice 3 part article about the impact of technology on job descriptions, or even more generically of Schumpeterian creative destruction, shown specifically in the example of the programming trade which is being likened to that of the 19th century blacksmith. The author is trying to figure out why the bookkeeper has survived the blacksmith, and he identifies the higher and evolving share of hyper-human skills involved in bookkeeping as the main reason. Some of those skills are:
- creativity and imagination
- love and empathy
- subjectivity
- wanting, valuing, intending
- social skills
- hypothesizing

Very interesting also the readers' reactions, who obviously are mostly programmers, and who do not like one bit being likened to blacksmiths ... they don't really seem to get the concept of metaphors, do they.